Steinberg Cubase 4 Operation Manual
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251 The Sample Editor 8.Click and drag the red flag (Stretch Bars) to the left or right until the second bar in the ruler is aligned with the position of the second downbeat of the sample, and re- lease the mouse button. The start of the next bar is set, and all grid positions will be stretched. 9.Check the other beats and hold down [Alt]/[Option] to use the pink flag (Stretch Previous - Move Next) if neces- sary. This flag is shown at bar positions. When you drag it with the mouse, the start of the next bar is set, and the tempo of the last bar will be changed. 10.Now have a look at the single beats in between the bars, and, if necessary, hold down [Ctrl]/[Command] to use the blue flag (Adjust Beat Position - Single) to adjust them. Drag the flag until the single beat position is aligned with the waveform, and release the mouse button. 11.Activate playback. If you find that the beat sounds too straight, you can either adjust the Quantize value on the Playback tab or move the Swing slider to add swing. The loop will automatically adjust to the project tempo, and follow any further tempo changes you make! In the Project window, the audio event will have a note symbol and two arrows in the upper right corner. The note symbol indicates Straighten Up mode and the arrow indicates that the file is stretched.
252 The Sample Editor Determining the tempo of an audio loop and slicing your audio 1.Import a suitable audio file, for example a drum loop. 2.Double-click the loop to open it in the Sample Editor. I f you r want to w ork with longe r aud io file, possibly with an upbeat, define a loop or resize the event as described in the section “Determining the audio tempo automatically and time-stretching your audio” on page 247. 3.Open the Definition tab and make sure the length in bars corresponds to the actual audio file. If necessary, listen to your audio and enter the correct bar length. 4.On the Hitpoints tab, open the “Use” pop-up and se- lect the desired option. This affects which hitpoints should be shown when moving the Sensitiv- ity slider (see “Setting the sensitivity” on page 255). 5.Adjust the Sensitivity slider. The hitpoints are shown. 6.If necessary, select the Edit Hitpoints tool to edit hit- points manually. You can add, delete and listen to hitpoints by pressing [Alt]/[Option] and clicking in the waveform. For detailed informations about hitpoints and their editing, see below. 7.Now, click the Slice & Close button in the Hitpoints tab to create audio slices from your hitpoints. The loop will be sliced and adjusted to the project tempo. The Sample Editor will be closed. In the following sections you will find more detailed infor- mation on editing and using hitpoints. Working with hitpoints and slices Hitpoint detection is a special feature of the Sample Edi- tor. It detects attack transients in an audio file and then adds a type of marker, a “hitpoint”, at each transient. These hitpoints allow you to create “slices”, where each slice ideally represents each individual sound or “beat” in a loop (drum or other rhythmic loops work best with this feature). When you have successfully sliced the audio file, you can do a number of useful things with it: Change the tempo without affecting the pitch. Extract the timing (a groove map) from a drum loop. This can then be applied to quantize other events. Replace individual sounds in a drum loop. Edit the actual playing in the drum loop without affecting the basic feel. Extract sounds from loops. ÖThe term “loop” is used throughout this section. Loop in this context usually means an audio file with a musical time base, i.e. the length of the loop represents a certain number of bars and/or beats at a certain tempo. Playing the loop back at the right tempo in a cycle set to the cor- rect length will produce a continuous loop without gaps. Using hitpoints The basic functionality of using hitpoints to slice up a loop is to make a loop fit the tempo of a song, or alternatively to create a situation that allows the song tempo to be changed while retaining the timing of a rhythmic audio loop, just like when using MIDI files. Which audio files can be used? Here are some guidelines as to what type of audio files are suited for slicing using hitpoints: Each individual sound in the loop should have some no- ticeable attack. Slow attacks, legato playing etc. may not produce the desired result. Poorly recorded audio might be difficult to slice cor- rectly. In these cases, try to normalize the files or to remove DC Offset. There may be problems with sounds drowned in smear- ing effects, like short delays. !When a selection range is defined, hitpoints will only be detected within this range.
253 The Sample Editor Calculating hitpoints and slicing a loop Before proceeding, find a suitable loop using the criteria above. Proceed as follows: 1.Open the event or clip for editing in the Sample Editor. You can do this by double-clicking an event on an audio track in the Project window or a clip in the Pool. In this example, we assume you work with an event on a track. 2.Open the Hitpoints tab in the Sample Editor Inspector and select an option from the Use pop-up. These settings don’t affect the actual detection but rather which hit- points will be shown afterwards. If you e.g. know that your loop is based on 1/16th notes, select “1/16”. If you’re uncertain, set this to “All” – you can change this setting afterwards if needed (see “Setting the sensiti- vity” on page 255). The Use pop-up menu 3.Adjust the sensitivity slider. Now, as you can see, hitpoints have been set at the beginning of each sound in the loop. 4.If you now move the hitpoint sensitivity slider to the left, this gradually hides the hitpoints. Moving the slider to the right increases the sensitivity to reveal additional hit- points detected during the calculate process. The basic aim is to add, remove or edit the hitpoints in various other ways so that one individual sound is played between each hitpoint. For details, see “Editing hitpoints” on page 254. 5.Verify the tempo and bars in the Definition tab. In the next step, the loop will adapt to the project tempo set in Cubase. 6.In the Hitpoints tab, click on the Slice & Close button to create audio slices from hitpoints. (You can also use the option “Create Audio Slices from Hitpoints” from the Au- dio menu.) The following happens: The Sample Editor closes. The audio event is “sliced” so that there is a separate event for each hitpoint. The audio event is replaced by an audio part, containing the slices (double-click the part to view the slices in the Audio Part Editor). The loop is automatically adapted to the project tempo. The slices in the Audio Part Editor. Here, the project tempo was higher than the loop’s original tempo – the slice events overlap slightly. Sliced clips are represented by a different icon in the Pool. Dragging the sliced clip from the Pool to an audio track will create an audio part with the slices adapted to the project tempo, just as above. 7.If you activate cycle playback on the Transport panel, the loop should now play back seamlessly at the tempo set in the program!
254 The Sample Editor 8.To make the loop follow any further tempo changes, make sure the track is set to “Musical time base” by using the respective button in the Track list or Inspector (the button should show a note symbol – see “Switching bet- ween musical and linear time base” on page 42). Note that if the project tempo is lower than the original tempo of the loop, there may be audible gaps between each slice event in the part. This can be remedied by using the Close Gaps function on the Ad- vanced submenu of the Audio menu, see “Close Gaps” on page 258. You should also consider activating auto fades for the respective audio track – fade-outs set to about 10 ms will help eliminate any clicks be- tween the slices when you play back the part. See “Fades, crossfades and envelopes” on page 87. If the project tempo is higher than the loop’s original tempo, you may want to activate auto crossfades for the track. You can use the Close Gaps functions in this case as well, see “Close Gaps” on page 258. Editing hitpoints In this section, we go back a bit and look at what can be done with hitpoints in the Sample Editor. There are two ways to invoke the hitpoint calculation: Use the sensitivity slider on the Hitpoints tab of the Sample Editor Inspector. Select Calculate Hitpoints from the Hitpoints submenu on the Audio menu. For some loops, this may be all that is needed to set the hitpoints so that each slice to be created will contain a single “hit” or sound. However, there will almost certainly be cases when the automatic calculation may add a hit- point where there shouldn’t be one, and fail to add a hit- point where one is needed, even if the sensitivity slider is set to maximum. If there are too many or too few hitpoints in a loop, it will most probably not play back properly. When this occurs, you have to edit the hitpoints manually in the Sample Editor. Auditioning slices A slice is a section of the waveform, from one hitpoint to the next. The first thing you should do before editing hitpoints is to listen to each slice in the Sample Editor to determine what they contain. The aim is to avoid “double hits”, like a snare hit being followed by a hi-hat hit within the same slice. You also want to determine whether any hitpoints have been added that should be removed: 1.Open a loop in the Sample Editor. If you have already created slices, you can open them in the Sample Ed- itor by double-clicking any event in the Audio Part Editor. If it is a new loop, follow the instructions below. 2.Open the Hitpoints tab and select the Edit Hitpoints tool. When you point in the waveform display, the pointer changes to a speaker icon. Click on this button to edit hitpoints
255 The Sample Editor 3.Now you can simply point and click in any slice area and the corresponding slice will be played back from the beginning to the end. Listen for “double hits” and slices that contain parts of a single sound. If you find hitpoints that need to be removed or instances where a hitpoint needs to be added, the first thing to try is to change the sensitivity setting – see the following sec- tion. Setting the sensitivity The loop is first analyzed to determine where hitpoints should appear (where the individual “beats” in the loop are), then you manually set the sensitivity with the sensitivity slider to determine how many hitpoints there should be. Try raising the sensitivity to add “missing” hitpoints and lowering it to remove unwanted hitpoints. This may or may not work, depending on the situation, but as a general rule you should try this first. Audition the slices again to determine if changing the sensitivity has improved matters. The “Use” pop-up menu in Hitpoints tab of the Sample Editor Inspector affects which hitpoints are shown and is a useful tool for removing unwanted hitpoints. The options on the pop-up menu are:If your main reason for slicing the loop is to change the tempo, you generally need as many slices as you can get, but never more than one per individual “hit” in the loop. If you want to create a groove (see “Creating groove quantize maps” on page 257), you should try to get ap- proximately one slice per eighth note, sixteenth note or whatever the loop requires. Disabling slices You might run into situations where there are too many slices – a single sound may have been split into two slices, for example. You could of course reduce the sensi- tivity to get rid of the hitpoints you don’t want, but then other hitpoints could disappear too, which may be unde- sirable. What you need to do in a situation like this is to disable an individual slice: 1.Open the Hitpoints tab in the Sample Editor Inspector and select the Edit Hitpoints tool. 2.Press [Alt]/[Option] and move the pointer to the han- dle (the triangle). The pointer turns into a cross. 3.Click on the handle of the hitpoint you wish to disable. The hitpoint handle is diminished and its line disappears to indicate that it is disabled. 4.Now, the hitpoint won’t be taken into account when you create slices. 5.To reactivate a disabled hitpoint, [Alt]/[Option]-click on the hitpoint handle in Edit Hitpoints tool. Option Description All All hitpoints are shown (taking the sensitivity slider into account). 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32Only hitpoints that are close to the selected note value positions within the loop will be shown (e.g. close to ex- act sixteenth note positions, if the 1/16 option is se- lected). Again, the sensitivity slider is taken into account. Metric Bias This is like the “All” mode, but all hitpoints that are close to even meter divisions (1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, 1/16 notes, etc.) get a “sensitivity boost” – they are visible at lower sensitivity slider settings. This is useful if you are working with dense or cluttered material with a lot of hit- points, but you know that the material is based on a strict meter. By selecting Metric Bias it will be easier to find the hitpoints close to the meter position (although most other hitpoints are also available, at higher sensitivity settings). Option Description
256 The Sample Editor Locking slices If you lock a hitpoint by clicking on its handle with the Edit Hitpoints tool, it will stay even if you drag the sensitivity slider all the way to zero. This can be used in situations where one or several slices contain double hits, but raising the sensitivity adds a lot of unwanted slices. 1.Find the place where you hear double hits when audi- tioning. 2.Remember the current slider setting. 3.Raise the sensitivity slider to a higher value so that a hitpoint appears, separating the two sounds. Most likely this will add a lot of other unwanted hitpoints as well. 4.Audition to make sure you got what you wanted. 5.Point at the handle with the Edit Hitpoints tool. The speaker icon changes to a normal arrow pointer. 6.Click on the handle to lock the new slice. Locked hitpoints are displayed in a darker color. 7.Drag the sensitivity slider to the original setting. The locked hitpoint will remain shown. You can unlock a locked hitpoint by clicking it again with the Edit Hitpoints tool. Setting hitpoints manually If you cannot get the desired result by adjusting sensitivity, disabling or locking, you can add, move and delete hit- points manually. Manually adding hitpoints can be done in situations where a hitpoint is missing at a specific point, but doesn’t appear even if the sensitivity is set to full. 1.Zoom in on the waveform at the point where you wish to add a hitpoint. 2.Select the Edit Hitpoints tool to audition the area and make sure that the start of the sound is in view.3.Activate Snap to Zero Crossing on the Sample Editor toolbar. By finding zero crossings in the waveform (positions where the amplitude is close to zero), manually added slices won’t introduce any clicks or pops. All hitpoints found by the Calculate function are automatically placed at zero crossings. 4.With the Edit Hitpoints tool selected press [Alt]/[Op- tion] so that the mouse pointer changes to a pencil tool and click just before the start of the sound. A new hitpoint appears. Manually added hitpoints are locked by default. If you click and keep the mouse button pressed, you can adjust the position of the new hitpoint by dragging. Releasing the mouse button adds the hitpoint. 5.Audition the new slice with the Audition tool to make sure you got what you wanted. If you manually added a hitpoint, and it was either placed too far away from the start of the sound or too far into the sound, you can manually move the hitpoint. It is also pos- sible to move calculated hitpoints this way. 1.Make sure Snap to Zero Crossing is activated on the Sample Editor toolbar. 2.Select the Edit Hitpoints tool. 3.Click on the hitpoint handle and drag it to the new position. To delete a hitpoint, select the Edit Hitpoints tool and drag the hitpoint out of the Sample Editor window. Hitpoints that you have created manually can also be deleted by clicking their handle. !“Snap to Zero Crossings” may alter the timing. In some cases it might be better to deactivate it, espe- cially if you just want to generate a groove quantize. However, if you create slices afterwards, auto fades will then be necessary.
257 The Sample Editor Match-Quantizing audio Optionally, hitpoints can have individual Q-points. These are mainly used for audio quantizing. Their function is to define the point to which the quantizing will apply. Some- times a slice might have a slow attack, and a peak further into the slice which you wish to use as the Q-point. When you apply quantize, the Q-point will define where the warp tab will be added. This also defines the point which will be stretched to a grid position when quantizing. To activate Q-points, open the Preferences (Editing– Audio page) and activate the option “Hitpoints have Q- Points”. Next time you use the Calculate Hitpoints function, the hitpoints will have Q-points. To offset the position of a Q-point in relation to the hit- point, simply click on the “Q” icon and drag it to the right to the desired position. Creating slices When you have specified the correct loop length and time signature and worked on the hitpoints in the Sample Edi- tor so that one sound per slice is heard, it is time to actu- ally slice the file (if that is what you want to do – there are other uses for hitpoints as well, as described on the fol- lowing pages). This is done either by clicking on the Slice & Close button in the Hitpoints tab of the Sample Editor Inspector or by selecting “Create Audio Slices from Hit- points” from the Hitpoints submenu on the Audio menu. The following happens:If you edited an event on an audio track, the Sample Ed- itor closes. The audio event is “sliced” so that there is a separate event for each hitpoint. In other words, the sections between the hitpoints become separate events, all referring to the same original file. On the audio track, the former audio event is replaced by an audio part that contains the slices. If you edited a clip from the Pool, you need to drag it to an audio track to get a part with the slices. See also the section “Calculating hitpoints and slicing a loop” on page 253. The loop is automatically adapted to the tempo set in Cubase. This takes the loop length you specified into account: e. g., if the loop was one bar long, the part is resized to fit exactly one bar in the Cubase tempo, and the slices are moved accordingly, keeping their relative posi- tions within the part. You can change the tempo and have the loop automati- cally follow (provided that the track is set to musical time base, see “Switching between musical and linear time base” on page 42). Furthermore, you can double-click the part to edit the slices in the Audio Part Editor to: Remove or mute slices. Change the loop by reordering, replacing or quantizing slices. Apply processing or effects to individual slices. Create new files from individual slices using the “Bounce Se- lection” function on the Audio menu. Realtime transpose and stretch slices. Edit slice envelopes. Creating groove quantize maps You can generate groove quantize maps based on the hit- points you have created in the Sample Editor. Groove quantizing is not meant for correcting errors, but for creat- ing rhythmic feels. This is done by comparing your re- corded music with a “groove” (a timing grid generated from the file) and moving the appropriate notes so that their timing matches the one of the groove. In other words, you can extract the timing from an audio loop and use it for quantizing MIDI parts (or other audio loops, after slicing them). !Sounds with a slow attack have their rhythmic center at some point before the peak. !Only when the audio tempo has been defined and the audio grid matches the project tempo, your slices will be straight (quantized). !When you create slices, all events containing the ed- ited clip will also be replaced.
258 The Sample Editor Proceed as follows: 1.Check the audio tempo and define the audio grid as described above. 2.Create and edit hitpoints as described above. You don’t have to create slices – just set up the hitpoints. You should try to get approximately one slice per eighth note, sixteenth note or whatever the loop requires when setting hitpoints for extracting a groove. It can be helpful to use one of the note value-based options on the “Use” pop-up menu when you’re setting up the hitpoints (see “Setting the sen- sitivity” on page 255). 3.When you have finished setting the hitpoints, click on the Make Groove button in the Hitpoints tab of the Sam- ple Editor Inspector or select “Create Groove Quantize from Hitpoints” from the Hitpoints submenu on the Audio menu. The groove is extracted. 4.If you now pull down the Quantize Type pop-up menu in the Project window you will find an additional item at the bottom of the list, with the same name as the file from which you extracted the groove. This groove can now be selected as a base for quantizing, just like any other quantize value. See “The Quantizing functions” on page 325. 5.If you want to save this Groove, open the Quantize Setup dialog and store it as a preset. ÖYou can also create grooves from a MIDI part by se- lecting the part and dragging it on the grid display in the middle of the Quantize Setup dialog or by selecting “Part to Groove” from the Advanced Quantize submenu on the MIDI menu. Other hitpoint functions On the Hitpoints tab of the Sample Editor Inspector and on the various submenus of the Audio menu, you will also find the following functions: Create Markers If an audio event contains calculated hitpoints, you can click on the Create Markers button in the Hitpoints tab to add markers – one for each hitpoint (see “Using the Mar- ker track” on page 108). This can be useful to snap to hit- points, e.g. for locating hitpoints and for using the Timewarp tool (see “The Time Warp tool” on page 402). Create Regions If your audio event contains calculated hitpoints, you can click the Create Regions button in the Hitpoints tab to au- tomatically create regions from hitpoints. This can be use- ful to isolate recorded sounds, in order to upload them, e.g. to HALion either as velocity or keyzones. When you make a selection, regions will only be calcu- lated from the hitpoints that are contained in the selection. Create Events When you simply wish to create separate events according to the hitpoints for a file, you can click on the Create Events button in the Hitpoints tab. This means that you do not have to make the same considerations as when slicing for tempo changes. You can use any method you like to set hitpoints. The slices created will appear in the Project window as separate events. Close Gaps This Advanced submenu function on the Audio menu is useful, if you have sliced a loop for tempo changes. Low- ering the tempo below the loop’s original tempo will cre- ate gaps between the slices. The lower the tempo is in relation to the original tempo, the wider the gaps will be. Close Gaps can be used to remedy this. 1.Set the desired tempo. 2.Select the part in the Project window. 3.Select “Close Gaps” from the Audio menu – Ad- vanced submenu. Now time-stretch is applied on each slice to close the gaps. Depending on the length of the part and the algorithm set in the Preferences, this can take a little while. 4.The waveform is redrawn and the gaps are closed! Note that this feature creates new clips in the Pool, one for each slice. Close Gaps can also be used when the project tempo is higher than the original loop tempo. This will use the time-stretch function to compress the slices to fit. If you decide to change the tempo again after using the Close Gaps function, you should undo the Close Gaps operation or start over again, using the original un- stretched file.
259 The Sample Editor You can also use this function on individual events (in the Audio Part Editor or Project window). The events don’t have to be slices – you can use Close Gaps simply to stretch an audio event to the start position of the next event. Free Warp Warp tabs are a kind of marker or anchor that can be attached to musically relevant time positions in an audio event, e.g. the first beat of every bar. Warp tabs can be dragged to the corresponding time positions in the project, and the audio will be stretched accordingly. A typical application of warp tabs is to use them to synchro- nize audio to video. You can also use warp tabs for further tweaking after hav- ing applied Straighten Up (see “About the Straighten Up mode” on page 249). Using the Free warp tool Warp tabs are created using the Free Warp tool on the Playback tab of the Sample Editor, but can also be cre- ated from hitpoints (see “Creating warp tabs from hit- points” on page 261). In this example, we will show how a file with a slightly varying tempo can be locked to a steady tempo by using warp tabs.1.Open the audio file you wish to process in the Sample Editor. 2.Activate the “Snap to Zero Crossings” button in the Sample Editor toolbar. When you activate this button, warp tabs will snap to zero crossings and hitpoints (if shown). 3.Determine the original tempo (if this is non-varying) or the length of the file (see “Determining the audio tempo au- tomatically and time-stretching your audio” on page 247). 4.Click the Auto Adjust button so that the audio event is stretched to the project tempo. The Straighten Up mode is automatically activated. 5.Select the Free Warp tool by clicking on it. For aligning the tempo, you should use Bars and Beats as the ruler reso- lution. When you place the mouse pointer in the waveform display, it changes to a clock with arrows on either side, and a vertical line in the middle which represents the pointer. When you move the pointer in the waveform window, it shows the position in bars, beats and ticks as well as in seconds. 6.Line up the audio file so that the first beat of the first bar (in the audio event) starts on the first beat of a bar in the project. If the audio file doesn’t start on a downbeat, you can use the Event Start handle in the Sample Editor and adjust the position in the Project window so that the first down- beat in the sample is aligned with the first beat of a bar in the grid. Now the musical first downbeat should be aligned with the first beat of a bar in the project. The next step is to see where the first warp tab needs to be added. It may be useful to hear the metronome click to determine when the tempo of the audio clip drifts from the project tempo. To hear the metronome, activate the Click button on the Transport panel and play back using the transport controls. 7.Play back the audio file, either by auditioning in the Sample Editor or from the Transport panel, and determine where the first beat of a bar in the audio event does not match the corresponding ruler position in the project. If you find it difficult to pinpoint an exact position in the audio event, you can switch to the Scrub tool and/or zoom in the view. Switch back to the Free Warp tool when you have found the position. !When you change the Straighten Up mode, select another Quantize value or move the Swing slider, all your warp edits will be lost.
260 The Sample Editor 8.In our example, the first beat of the third bar in the au- dio event is slightly offset from the corresponding grid po- sition and thus needs to be moved back a bit. 9.Place the pointer at the position of the first beat of the third bar in the audio event and click and hold. When you click, a warp tab is added. If the position where you clicked was off, you can adjust it by dragging the tab in the ruler. 10.With the mouse button still pressed, drag the warp tab so that the position lines up with the first beat of the bar in the ruler.11.Release the mouse button. Now the first beat in the audio event is perfectly aligned with the corre- sponding position in the project! You can also first add warp tabs at the relevant musical positions and change their positions later, see “Editing warp tabs” on page 261. Next to the warp tab handle in the ruler, a number is shown. This number indicates the warp factor, i.e. the amount of stretch. Warp factor numbers higher than 1.0 indicate that the audio region preceding the warp tab is expanded and will play back slower. Warp factor numbers lower than 1.0 indicate that the audio region preceding the warp tab is compressed and will play back faster. ÖNote that this ratio is limited to a range between 0.1 and 10. This factor is updated when you change the project tempo with Straighten Up mode enabled or apply the timestretch tool in the project. 12.Continue to use the same method to align the first beat in each bar to the corresponding ruler position. You only have to add warp tabs where the downbeat in the audio file drifts from the ruler position and/or if you want to lock a warp tab so that it is not moved when editing other points. When you are done, the previously varying tempo of the audio event will be metronome-steady and will adapt to any tempo in Cubase. The third downbeat in the audio event.